Steady Vigil: Protection Warrior 6.0

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction:

I am a veteran player of WoW (and the military) and have been progression tanking since 2006 with Karazhan. I originally played a Prot Paladin up until Dragon Soul, when I finally embraced my Prot Warrior. Currently I am tanking for Warforged as Kosmonaut. I stream every raid, Challenge Modes, sweet Garrison skill and basically anything else I end up doing. You can find me on Twitch.tv.

This guide will provide for you the basics for tanking as a Protection Warrior, any relevant information and additional tips I have picked up myself along the way. I will cover everything from the design shift of the encounters and the Tanking role itself to the abilities we have gained and lost. I have also included a list of addons beneficial to tanking that will help you to improve and more effectively progress your skill and raid experience.

Tanks were designed in the previous tier to be pushing out massive amounts of damage while soaking all types of damage we previously (and currently) were not supposed to ever even consider. If we go ahead and just consider Siege of Orgrimmar tanking as the black sheep of raid tiers, we will see a smoother transition in the changes we are facing.

We are being pushed to more realistic standards of survivability through our lowered self-sufficiency. The strength of our active mitigation has been decreased and the large majority of our healing capabilities were adjusted to give proficient tanking a much higher skill cap. Now we need to focus on mastering our active mitigation abilities to their fullest potential and re-adhering to the basics – not standing in fire.

Changes: (drop down)

Thunder Clap now no longer provides the Weakened Blows effect, and reduces enemy movement speed by 50% for 6 seconds.

Headlong Rush is a new passive for Warriors that causes haste to reduce the global cooldown and the cooldowns of Mortal Strike, Bloodthirst, Shield Slam, and Thunder Clap.

Blood Craze is a new passive ability for Protection Warriors. Blood Craze causes Multistrike auto attacks to trigger a Blood Craze, which regenerates 3% of the Warrior's health over 3 seconds. When this effect is refreshed, the remaining duration is added to the new effect.

Riposte has been redesigned; Riposte now gives the Warrior Parry equal to their Critical Strike bonus from gear. (This was recently fixed so we can benefit from procs as well).

Vengeance has been removed and replaced with a new passive ability, Resolve.

Resolve: Increases self-healing and absorption based on damage taken (before avoidance and mitigation) in the last 10 seconds. Without Resolve, Tanks now deal significantly less self-healing and absorption. Resolve has been made much stronger to counteract this, and it increases the amount of self-healing and absorption as appropriate for the fight.

Shield Block now regenerates a new charge every 12 seconds (up from every 9 seconds).

Unwavering Sentinel no longer increases Armor, but now also reduces the chance for attacks to be parried by 3%.

Mastery also increases AP by 8% (percentage increased with Mastery), in addition to its current effects.

Execute Don't get carried away with this when you are close to a kill! Everyone will be focused on killing the boss, so you need to make sure you are staying alive by using your active mitigation!

Last Stand(Proactive & Reactive): You can take advantage of this really at any health level, preventing your death after a big hit or during heavy incoming damage, or as a preventative measure when you are preparing for heavy hits.

Demoralizing Shout(Proactive): Best used before taking big hits, since it is a short cooldown, you can use this more freely than Shield Wall, but don't waste it on tolerable damage that Shield Block and Shield Barrier can easily handle.

Shield Wall (Proactive): Best used before taking high amounts of damage for maximum potential. If you are using this at low health, you are not benefiting from this as much as you should.

Always remember that your raid team will have external defensive cooldowns they can provide you, so do not be afraid to ask for them! I have a list of beneficial add-ons near the end of the guide that will include one to help you track these externals.

Some abilities have been completely removed from the class, and some have been removed from the spec:

Perks:

Improved Heroic Leap Do I need to mention how amazing this is? Makes positioning mobs and bosses not currently attacking you that much easier. Taunted the wrong mob on accident? This is a lifesaver.. literally.

Stat Priorities:

WoD Stat Changes:

Bonus Armor provides AP at a 1:1 ratio with Bladed Armor. This is a pure increase in our survivability to physical damage, not to mention will passively increase the value of our Shield Barriers. Since this only appears on a few slots of gear pieces (Neck, Cloak, Rings, Trinkets and Shields), this will have priority on itemization when available. Unfortunately, not directly boosted with Improved Defensive Stance, but your overall armor will still adjust.

Mastery is now a double-sided coin, providing us with offensive and defensive benefits. Along with somewhat increasing our passive block chance, drastically increasing our Critical Block chance, this also now provides a scaling increase to our attack power, which ALSO will passively increase the value of our Shield Barriers. This is our main stat for the majority of our gear. Also boosted for our spec with Shield Mastery.

Critical Strike now provides you with parry at a 1:1 ratio with the new Riposte. On top of doubling the damage on the ability that crits, this also increases your chance of getting an Ultimatum proc.

Versatility provides a flat increase in damage, healing done, and damage reduction. This is a very powerful stat, which is why it does not have the greatest scaling per point.

Haste now lowers the GCD and the cooldown of Shield Slam and Thunderclap through Headlong Rush. As fun as it would be to Thunderclap with no cooldown, this is okay to have some, but not something to stack on gear. Thankfully, at least, now provides to us a benefit to Heroism/ Bloodlust other than faster auto attacks XD

Multistrike grants a percent chance to trigger extra attacks at 30% of the value and trigger Blood Craze. This is a fairly underpowered stat for Prot Warriors.

I have listed Versatility = Crit because they are situationally equivalent for increasing your survivability. Versatility is just a pure reduction in damage, so it will cover all things, including unavoidable, unblockable, bleeds, and magic damage from which you would not benefit from Crit / Parry would not otherwise.

Playstyle:

Protection Warrior is less of a set rotation and more of a priority system for our main abilities, primarily due to the amount of cooldown resetting abilities we have. Shield Slam > Revenge > Devastate is still the basis for our priority as previously for threat, DPS and most importantly, rage generation.

It should not need to be said, but Devastate is ONLY to be used when Shield Slam and Revenge are on cooldown, in any situation. AoE threat should not be an issue and it is even more important to be generating rage due to the increased amount of incoming damage. If, however, you want to increase your threat / damage output, you can push your talents above Revenge and Shield Slam.

The biggest piece of advice I can offer for rage generation is to stay on top of your usage. I see a lot of Prot Warriors in various groups I have been in sitting on their rage for no apparent reason. While it is perfectly acceptable to sit on rage for a few seconds in order to time your active mitigation, it will only hurt you, and your raid group, if you are wasting your rage. If you are not pooling rage for something specific within the next few seconds, there is no reason for you to have 60+ rage at any given time.

Though higher damage output is an enjoyable playstyle, it is important that all tanks, new and old, remember that the meta has shifted from a focus on damage output, especially with the abuse of Vengeance, to prioritizing survivability. Your DPS output is not as rewarding as it was in previous tiers. Encounters are designed around tanks effectively using their cooldowns and active mitigation and the skillcap for doing so has been increased by reducing the effectiveness of our active mitigation.

As a general rule, always prioritize your defensive capability over your offensive output and strive to maximize this until you are comfortable and geared enough to start putting more work on your damage. With the way tanking is currently designed, even on farm with BiS gear, you should still make sure you are adhering to the basics you formed in progression, unlike in previous tiers, where you could take as much damage as possible for pure DPS output.

"How do I choose?"At the most, both will cost you 60 rage. Shield Block will only partially reduce blockable hits, whereas Shield Barrier will fully absorb to its limit.

While Shield Barrier can potentially save your life, it is almost always more important to put up your Shield Block first. The highest amount of damage you take in raid will almost always be Melee attacks by the boss. Blocking, and Critical Blocking through mastery, will reduce the largest portion of damage for you throughout the fight.

The best way to approach this is to maximize your Shield Block uptime and save rage for a solid Shield Barrier when you are expecting magic damage, bleeds, heavy damage, boss special mechanics, or really any types of burst damage. You should have more than enough rage to adequately fill in your Shield Block gaps with Shield Barriers.

The most important thing in deciding this will be not that you are being hit hard, but the way you are being hit. Roughly prioritize Shield Block over Shield Barrier, but always use your judgment against the incoming damage and predict the type of damage you will receive. The design is for you to basically adapt to the incoming damage and respond effectively, hence “active mitigation.”

One of the most commonly asked questions I hear from new Prot Warriors is "When should I use Heroic Strike?"

Before we get into that, let's cover the Heroic Strike modifiers we have available:

Unyielding Strikes: A stacking buff you gain after using Devastate. Overall, this is a survivability loss, even with the drastically reduced cost.

Glyph of Cleave: Doubles the value of your Heroic Strikes; excellent for any situation involving more than one target.

Now, the answer to this question really depends on your own comfort level. I highly recommend that you do not use Heroic Strike outside of Ultimatum procs, with the exception that you are off-tanking (with Shield Block already up for Heavy Repercussions damage.) or you over-gear the content.

Set yourself up with good habits like this so you can truly excel at tanking with this class.

Talents:

Our current talent selections range from a few playstyle preferences to very powerful abilities to have, especially depending on the design of the encounter. Always remember to check and update your talent choices before each boss encounter, as they typically will not be the best choices each time.

Mostly a preference, but sometimes having that extra charge will be far more useful during movement or pickup phases. Since charge no longer stuns, Warbringer may bring some value, but generally not as much as the other two options.

Per minute, both of these will heal for the same amount. However, Enraged Regeneration does not cost rage and has the potential to be less overhealing due to the HoT effect it applies. I would recommend this as the best option.

Heavy Repercussions unless you are interested in higher DPS at a defensive opportunity cost (rage going to Heroic Strike instead of an active mitigation option) in which case Sudden Death is a larger contribution. In the case that the encounter requires more use of Shield Barrier than Shield Block, Sudden Death becomes a much more appropriate option.

Dragon Roar was modified with this expansion to no longer take massive AoE diminishing returns by dividing the total damage across the targets, and will now deal equal damage to all targets in the pack. Unless you need the stun of Shockwave, it is the preferred choice. The damage of Storm Bolt is not currently even worth mentioning as a viable option.

Generally Safeguard will reduce more damage throughout the encounter, since you can consistently apply it to the other tank on a very short CD. Depending on the situation, Vigilance could end up being a better option, like if you needed it for a raid member not near you / you need the chain taunt if Mocking Banner is not available. Mass Spell Reflection is a lot less beneficial now that is does not offer an additional reflect the way it did previously.

Tough choice for this tier; situationally Ravager is by far the top choice by far for AoE. Single target options are a hard debate and depend really on your rage generation. Excellent rage generation can make Anger Management an amazing passive ability. Gladiator's Resolve is also a perfectly viable option, especially if you take a lot of extra damage. Personally, I like the extra cooldowns.

Glyphs:

Thanks to the removal of Heavy Repercussions and Hold the Line, we finally are able to use all of our glyph slots, but they are all, for the most part, situationally beneficial.

Glyph of Cleave is very useful on almost every encounter in the current raid tier, not to mention all of the trash in between. This should really only be switched out for pure single target encounters like The Butcher.

Glyph of Bull Rush can be a great go-to option for anything, really shining on encounters where you are moving a lot (like Ko’ragh or Tectus).

Racial Perks:

All of the Racial Perks were overhauled for WoD and some very strong races have flipped with the weaker races in terms of their benefits. I have listed them roughly in terms of their benefit as a Prot Warrior.

Consumables:

A very amazing change for tanks is the addition of the new Healing Tonic, which are not only better than a Healthstone, but scale with your resolve (crafted from First Aid). These will NOT conflict with the cooldown of your Draenic Armor Potion!

Enchants:

Pre-WoD enchants are locked to sub-600 ilvl gear, so for the time being, we are only able to enchant Weapons, Neck, Cloak and Rings. I have listed the best enchants for mastery and crit priority builds.

Addons:

Unfortunately, Highmaul does not offer a large variety in gear, since it’s pretty much one drop per slot for a lot of the set. Prideful Gladiator gear can be a good option for some slots (like chest) while you are gearing through Normal and Heroic, but once you are in Mythic, the PvP items will not even come close in comparison.

Remember that warforged upgrades and bonus sockets can potentially count as an upgrade over a better itemized piece. Also do not underestimate the value of the Strength and Stamina gained from big differences in item level. For the time being, don’t worry too much about the lack of quality itemization on gear from raid and work on perfecting your playstyle and master your ability usage. Form good habits early so you can use them as a solid foundation for your personal, and your guild’s raid, progression through this expansion.

Comments

Comment by Digitalghostify

This is great!

Comment by Fastous

thanks for this, lots of great info

Comment by narthenarthe

Very informative!

Comment by Mastershots123

Hmmm.... Hmmmmm.... marvelous!

Comment by jemaris

Very good guide. I like that you haven't just named the spells & repeated their tooltips as some people do. You've actually explained why & how etc too. I liked your explanations about Devastate, Heroic Strike and Shield Block / Shield Barrier. This guide is much better than the official guide.